Law school positions staked out with all deliberate speed

DARTMOUTH — The gloves already are coming off in the renewed fight over the proposed merger of the Southern New England School of Law with UMass Dartmouth.

STEVE URBON

DARTMOUTH — The gloves already are coming off in the renewed fight over the proposed merger of the Southern New England School of Law with UMass Dartmouth.

Two days after the UMass trustees reintroduced the idea, which was rejected by the Board of Higher Education in 2005, both major Boston daily newspapers — the Globe and the Herald — gave the idea fresh editorial raspberries.

"A poor time for a law school at UMass Dartmouth," said the Globe, citing the poor economy.

"No cash for this clunker," said the Herald headline.

Then later last Friday, state Rep. John Quinn, D-Dartmouth, himself a Suffolk Law grad, and noting how the state's private law schools are leading the opposition to the merger, came up with an idea.

"The state gives $20 million in scholarships every year to schools like Suffolk, with taxpayers' money. Maybe we can't afford the $20-million-a-year subsidy to schools that are sitting on billion-dollar endowments," he said.

He said that he plans to introduce a measure on the House floor on Tuesday to establish a study commission to look into state subsidies of wealthy private institutions via scholarships.

After state Treasurer Timothy Cahill was quoted in a Globe article opposing the law school merger as something the state neither needs nor can afford, Quinn said, "I can't believe Cahill, when he knows he's going to be a candidate statewide, making such an uninformed statement. It sounds like a frustrated non-lawyer."

Those on both sides of the question ran to their battle stations as soon as the merger was mentioned.

Richard Doherty, president and CEO of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, raised hackles by telling a reporter, "I don't know how or why anyone would want to be taking on the cost and responsibility of the creation of a public law school when we're trying our hardest to make ends meet with the higher education systems and institutions that we currently have."

Sen. Mark Montigny, D-New Bedford, shot back that the private institutions are abusing their status as non-profit charities by padding executive salaries, taking tax money in scholarship subsidies, and playing an insider game with the state's political establishment at the expense of the public interest.

"With their interlocking directorates they feed each other contracts," said Montigny. "They stick together to pad their own pockets. It's comical, but it's sad."

He described the system as "insidious."

All of this is before anyone has seen the details of the proposal.

Yet perhaps there is the possibility of movement on the issue.

For one thing, three-quarters of the members of the Board of Higher Education are new since 2005.

Another is that Stephen Tocco, a Mitt Romney appointee who was chairman of the Board of Higher Education when it killed the merger plan in 2005 by an 8-3 vote, is not on the panel, but is on the UMass board, and is saying he is open to a new plan.

Last week he told The Standard-Times that he stands by his opposition last time because "it just wasn't a good proposal last time." For one thing, he said, it would have returned no tuition money to the state, as other higher education campuses all do, in effect creating a state subsidy for itself.

The new proposal promises to be different in that and other ways, and Tocco said he is keeping an open mind.

He also defended his fellow board members against skepticism about the way the process was handled, saying that he firmly believes that the case was decided on the merits.

But there was so much political pressure being applied, particularly on the part of opponents, that it eventually drew a lawsuit from the Student Bar Association at the law school.

The lawsuit charged that Suffolk and two other law schools were "obtaining improper, unfair, corrupt and undue influence and sway over the proceedings and deliberations of the board, including but not limited to its committees, subcommittees, members and staff."

Specifically, it charged that Suffolk improperly hired Charles Chieppo, less than a full year out of his employment in Gov. Romney's Executive Office of Administration and Finance, where he was partly responsible for reviewing the merger proposal.

That violated the ethics laws, said the suit, which are designed to keep public officials from cashing in on their connections.

He was hired "to write and deliver a report critical of the application of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth to merge with the Southern New England School of Law," the lawsuit alleged.

Leon Blais, the SNESL grad who filed the lawsuit as the attorney for the student bar, could not be reached for comment.

But Margaret "MarDee" Xifaras, who chairs the law school's board of trustees, said that the suit resulted in an agreement to conduct a clean, open process should the merger ever again be discussed.

"It resulted in a definitive protocol were the university in the future ever to decide to reapply," she said. "It is that protocol under which we are currently operating. People who want to weigh in pro or con have to submit in writing whatever they submit to the Board of Higher Education," she said.

That provision is due, in part, to Romney telling the public and press he was "neutral" on the merger, and then lobbying the board members against the proposal in a series of late-night, last-minute phone calls.

Xifaras also said, "There will be no special secret meetings as there were last time, when they had a clear violation of the open meeting law when they pulled the commissioners out of the meeting into a side room" and never disclosed what they talked about in there.

This time, not only are there strict guidelines, but "we've actually got a monitor, a former chief justice of the appeals court," she said.